Single Wide Female: The Bucket List Mega Bundle - 24 Books (Books #1-24) (3 page)

As I hurried the rest of the way to the class, I tried not to think of Max, brownies, or anything that made me feel less than sexy and capable.

I reached the small building and stopped just outside the door, taking a few deep breaths. Only then did I see the smattering of crumbs all over my leotard. I brushed them off, thankful that I’d noticed them before entering the gym. I took one last deep breath as I reached for the handle on the door, trying my best to remain calm.

Chapter 4

I am sexy. I am beautiful. I am comfortable in my skin, and I am proud of my body.
This was the mantra that I was chanting in my head as I walked into my first pole dancing class.

When I’d been getting up the courage to sign up for the class, I’d told myself that there’d be other women my shape and size there too. After I’d walked into the room, I could see that this was not the case.
At all
. It was a bit hard to tell the pole from the pole dancers.

“Welcome,” a shrill voice called from the small reception desk set up in the corner of the open gym.

“I think I might be in the wrong place.” I hesitated.

The women were looking at me with funny expressions on their faces. I started to turn back toward the door, but stopped when I saw the teacher walking toward me. He couldn’t have been more than five foot five, which was several inches shorter than me. He wore a black leotard with a pink ribbon wrapped around the middle and a matching pink sweatband to hold back his perfectly trimmed brown curls. His smile was so wide that it seemed to take up his whole face. He was friendly in a way that I couldn’t ignore.

“Oh no, you’re right where you’re supposed to be. I’m Randy,” he said as he reached out to grab my hand. “Come in, come in. I’ll introduce you to the ladies.”

I gritted my teeth. The last thing I wanted to do was meet the ladies.

“Ladies, this is—” He paused and looked in my direction.

“Samantha—Sammy—Bradford.” I stumbled over my own name. It wasn’t that I was feeling insecure—it just wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. I loved my body, but it looked a little bit more sausagey than saucy when compared to these women standing in front of me.

Randy smiled at me. “Sammy, this is Mia, Mara, Melody, and Janice, my star students,” he smiled proudly.

I eyed Janice closely. She must be the black sheep.

“Now, these ladies have had a few weeks of training already, Samantha, so please understand that no one expects you to be able to do what they can do, okay?” Randy said as he walked back to the front of the group.

I nodded and settled down on the floor near Janice. The black sheep were always the best ones to sidle up to, in my experience. I hoped that she would help me break the ice so that I could begin to feel a bit more comfortable around the group.

“Mara, why don’t you show us what we learned last week?” Randy said and stepped back to watch.

“Gladly,” Mara said and lifted her chin.

I could see why. Her chin was perfect. Not too pointy, not too round, and there was only one of them.

Mara stood up, showing off her five-foot-nine, too-skinny-to-get-on-a-scale body, and wrapped her arms around the pole. Randy hit a button on the remote he had tucked into his pink ribbon, and the lights dimmed. Music began to play with a steady rhythmic thump. A bright light clicked on and shone right on the stripper pole that Mara was clinging to.

She began to gyrate her hips up against the pole as she worked her way a few feet up off the ground. I stared at her as she moved, graceful as any dancer I’d ever seen. Her long dark hair tumbled down like a waterfall when she tipped her head back and smiled at the rest of us.

Perfect, I thought. Not a word I would use to describe what I anticipated doing on the stage.

“Brilliant,” Randy said and waved her away dismissively. “Now, let’s see what Samantha has to show us. Mrow!” He feigned a cat’s paw with his hand and swiped it at me.

Seriously? I thought. He had gone from charismatically friendly to disturbingly cheesy.

I reminded myself about the list. I had come this far. I wasn’t going to quit now. This didn’t seem like your typical class, but I was willing to give it a shot.

I stepped to the front of the room, feeling nervous despite the little pep talk I’d just given myself. I turned to face the other women, knowing that they had their critical gazes focused on me. “Okay, now keep in mind that this is my first time, ladies,” I said, looking around the room, willing them to cut me a small break as I prepared to give it a good try. None of them were overly friendly, but Janice managed a small smile in my direction. “Here I go!” I plastered a big smile on my face and grabbed the pole, spinning myself around it as hard as I could.

I lost my grip during the very first spin and went sailing off the edge of the platform. I would have been mortified with just that, but no, I had to go ahead and commit a total face-plant on the gym floor.

“Oh, no. Are you okay? We don’t really have insurance for this,” Randy said, sounding nervous as he helped me up.

“I’m fine,” I squeaked out, smoothing my leotard as I tried to catch my breath and calm myself. How was I supposed to know that the pole would be so darn slippery?

“Try again.” Randy was quick to encourage me, and he seemed to be telling me with his steady eye contact to ignore the other women’s barely restrained laughter.

“I don’t know if I can,” I said, already sweaty and feeling my face grow warm under what I was sure was a nice shade of red. I couldn’t believe I had ever written this activity down on my list.

He leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. “You need to teach these skinny girls what sexy is, Samantha. You use that beautiful body, you seduce us with those curves—you get up there and show them what it means to be a woman.”

His words sunk in and I felt my heart pumping. He was right. Voluptuous—that was what I called myself. I had the sweet figure that men liked, no matter what other women might say. This was
my
time to prove to myself how sexy I was. This was
my
bucket list, not theirs!

Chapter 5

I marched back up on to the platform. I wiped my hands on my leotard and then grabbed the pole. Randy turned the music up and added a strobe-light effect. I imagined my name being announced to an adoring crowd of seedy men who had nothing better to do than spend their paychecks on half-dressed women humping poles, and I was quite proud of myself.

I could feel the music pumping through my body right along with the movement of my muscles. Everything became vivid. I could sense the pole against my palm, as if it was the only thing that mattered. I could feel the brush of air across my sweat-covered skin. I could smell the chemicals in the rubber mats on the floor and the strange cologne that the teacher was wearing. But more than anything else, I could feel my body. I could feel it pulsing with the music. I could feel every stretched muscle, every thrust hip, until my body felt as if it was flying.

I leaned so far back that my hair brushed the platform, and then slowly pulled myself back up. I hooked my leg around the pole and tried to shimmy up it a bit, before sliding back down. I didn’t get too far, but it didn’t matter; the music was still flowing through me. I spun around the pole, this time careful to keep my grip. My hair flew in my face, but I just blew it away with a sexy huff.

I was so caught up in the dance that I didn’t hear Randy. It wasn’t until he cut off the music and the lights came back on that I realized I should stop. The women seated around the platform were staring up at me with their mouths open.

Randy had both eyebrows raised. “Well, Ms. Samantha, I think you were hiding a talent.” He laughed and clapped his hands loudly. “Maybe next class you’ll save some time for the others, though.”

“Time?” I asked with surprise as I looked around.

“You’ve been dancing for twenty minutes!” Janice said. “How did you do that thing you did?” She genuinely sounded awestruck.

“What thing?” I was very confused. How did I lose twenty minutes? I had just let my body move to the music. Had I done anything embarrassing?

“That thing where you had one leg over your head and the other one was spread way out—” Janice tried to demonstrate.

I stared at the woman and what she was attempting to do with her legs.

“Oh, no way, I did not do that,” I said firmly. Just looking at Janice contorting herself in such a way made me want to snuggle down on a nice soft couch.

“Oh, yes, you did.” Randy grinned. “You have a sexy beast in you, Sammy, and you let it out on that pole today!”

I was stunned as I wiped some sweat from my forehead. Was it possible I had just not realized what I was doing?

“I want you to teach me,” Mara said as she looked up at me with wide eyes. “Please, will you?”

I laughed and shook my head. “I have no idea what I did. I just let the music flow through me. I just moved to the beat.”

“It was amazing,” the other women chimed in, all applauding my efforts.

Mara frowned as she glanced at me and then at her own figure. “I wish I had hips that could do that.”

“All hips can do that,” I said with confidence. “We just have to find a way to let our bodies be free.”

“Maybe we should all just get naked,” Janice said.

“Janice!” Mara gasped and stared at her friend.

“I was just kidding!” Janice said, looking only slightly embarrassed.

I had to laugh a little. But I didn’t think Janice was that far off. I felt amazing. I knew Max’s insistence that I not cover up my body had given me a chance to shake off my stage fright. Of course, I had no idea what I had just done or why the ladies had admired me so much, but it didn’t matter. It had given me the ego boost I needed to feel wonderful about myself.

I strutted down the sidewalk in my leotard and tights, not caring who saw me. I now knew what power my body held. In fact, I must have still been exuding some seductive energy, because men on the street began whistling and hollering at me. I usually frowned on this type of behavior, but this time it was nice. I winked back at them. I even waved to one. I felt like a movie star.

Then I realized that it wasn’t just the men staring at me. It was, in fact, everyone I passed on the sidewalk and even people across the street. Cars were honking their horns as they drove by. Only then did I realize that I should not be feeling a cool breeze against my—

“Oh my god!” I grabbed the backside of my leotard. It had split right down the middle, and I was walking down the street with my rear bare for everyone to see. I held the material together and ran for the nearest doorway.

“No, no, no.” I ducked into the building without even bothering to look to see what it was. A group of people were sitting around in a small circle on folding chairs. Most of them had cups of coffee in their hands.

“Pardon me,” I said as I tried to keep my rear facing away from them. “Would you have a restroom?” I said a silent prayer in my head while I waited for a reply.

“Are you here for the meeting?” a woman in the middle of the group asked.

“Meeting?”

“SA,” one of the men in the circle piped up.

“SA?” I was still confused. “Uh, sure.”

“Okay, hurry up, we’ve already started,” the woman said, pointing out the bathroom.

Chapter 6

I ducked right in to the restroom and locked the door behind me. Once inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. When I opened my eyes I was startled by the posters on the wall.

When sex is a have-to instead of a pleasure, it’s addiction
, one poster declared, with the picture of a man looking desperate sitting on the edge of a bed.

Do you have multiple partners in one night? Have you ever blacked out and not realized that you’ve had a sexual encounter? Then you might be a sex addict
, another poster explained.

“SA,” I said in a whisper. “Sex addicts—oh my god!”

I groaned and peeked over my shoulder at my fully bare bottom. The more I tried to tug the material together, the more it frayed apart. The only thing between my bottom and the rest of the world was a thin pair of black pantyhose, and that appeared to have a big hole starting as well. This was not going to be good.

I looked around for something—anything—to use to disguise my backside. I grabbed for some paper towels, thinking I could make a little skirt out of them, but when I pulled the first one out, it was also the last one.

“Hello. Are you coming out of there?” a voice called out from the other side of the door. “Other people have to use the bathroom, you know!”

I looked in the mirror and remembered the pep talk I’d given myself earlier. I took a deep breath and knew that I just had to get home and put some pants on. I placed the paper towel over my bottom and opened the door to the bathroom. I held my chin up high and marched right out.

“Uh, miss?” one of the men said as he watched me walk past, my paper towel flapping in the breeze from the spinning ceiling fans.

“Nothing to see here…” I walked fast across the room and opened the door. As it fell shut behind me, I heard the woman whisper to the other people in the circle.

“Some of us just aren’t ready to ask for help yet. One day she’ll admit she has a problem and we’ll be here for her.”

I groaned and tried to edge my way along the wall. I didn’t think I was going to make it all the way back to my apartment like this. Would I be arrested for indecent exposure? Would I offend nuns and small children? My heart was pounding with embarrassment. I was certain that I could not possibly feel worse.

Then a car driving beside me began to slow down. I pretended not to notice. Just keep going, I told myself.

“Sam, is that you?” a familiar voice asked as the car pulled to a stop.

In that moment I cursed myself for challenging the universe. I had been certain nothing could make my situation worse, and now I was about to be proved wrong. Not only was I to be humiliated in front of my entire neighborhood, but also in front of the man whose face occupied ninety percent of my fantasies. I refused to look in his direction.

“Go away, Max!” I said, already too embarrassed for words.